Saturday, Nov. 29, 2003 | 12:33 AM

Have you ever seen the movie, Before Sunrise? In it, two strangers meet on a train and spend the next 24 hours together. The boy is American and the girl is French�both are on holiday. They fall in love in a protracted sort of way, and change each other. It�s a beautiful film.

That is essentially what happened to me on the way from Boston to Rochester.

It was so simple really. His name was Matt. I am prone to exaggeration, but I say this with the utmost sincerity�I have never clicked with another person so immediately as I clicked with him. All through my life I�ve felt alien and alone and on some level relating to other people has always required a great deal of concentration on my part. But this. This was instantaneous and holy. Some kind of fusion occurred. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end when we first started talking. It was almost dare I say, religious.

He�s a musician and a writer. He grew up in my hometown in upstate New York, moved to Boston, and went to the same college as me (I�d never met him before though.) Now he lives right in my neighborhood. We were finishing each other�s sentences almost immediately and spent ten hours doing nothing but talking to each other. I found myself telling him things I�ve never told anyone�things I�ve never talked about here nor even to my closest friends in any great detail. He understood me and I understood him. I felt my whole heart and soul open up and suddenly the possibilities inherent in the world seemed to blossom and multiply. Things that have seemed murky and confusing to me suddenly became perfectly clear. I don�t want to go into all of them, but in a flash I realized why I�ve done some of the things I have done�why I�ve followed some of the patterns I�ve followed.

There was something in him that was so beautiful and so real. I surprised myself by being able to give so fully to another person. I felt like I was absolutely OK just the way I am. I felt like he saw me. And through his eyes I saw myself. He felt the same. It was energizing and beautiful.

He asked me for my number and all that baloney. I don�t know whether we�ll hook up again or not, and really it doesn�t matter. Maybe we�ll be lovers. Maybe we�ll be friends. Maybe we�ll just have that one magical night. But in ten hours, meeting him changed my life. Again, I say this without exaggeration. He is a beautiful human being and until the day I die I will be thankful that he stumbled onto my path. And to think I almost missed the bus. It�s incredible.

The epilogue to this story is that he gave me his band�s demo CD, and I knew it was going to be good. I wasn�t disappointed. Listening to it, my heart fell right down to my toes. While I was listening, my sister�s friend Nadia came over and asked me what was playing. I told her the story about the boy and then the name of the band. Her jaw unhinged. It turns out she knew him because her mother was his teacher. She told me what a fantastic person he was. The cosmic coincidence of it just continues to ripple.

Since I�ve been home I�ve dreamed about some of the things he�s said to me every single night. I feel like I�m at the home stretch in this long journey I�ve had ever since the Spring of 2002 when Neptune swung through and conjuncted my moon and opposed my Saturn for the first time. This is the third and last time I will experience those planetary transits. As I said, the first was May-August of 2002, the second was January-March of 2003, and the third has been September-December of 2003. I won�t go into everything that�s happened during those periods�I already have done in this diary, though vaguely at times. But this has been a period of remarkable change and growth for me. And although I get stuck in the darkness sometimes, I feel consistently touched by the endless possibility that exists in the universe.

I feel so clear right now and so sure of where to go next. It�s all such a fucking wonderful adventure.